Comedian Modi Rosenfeld is Interviewed on Israeli TV and Tells His Favorite Jewish Joke

Modi Rosenfeld is one of our favorite Jewish comedians. We've been following his career and shtick ever since we started Jewish Humor Central in 2009. Whether it's his standup comedy or clever skits and short films, he always leaves us laughing.

Modi is making waves in the New York stand-up scene, embracing and making light of his Israeli background, and sharing his Jewish humor on social media. Last month he was interviewed on Israeli TV. He talked about his background, growing up in Long Island, and how he relates to different audiences.

He also told one of his favorite Jewish jokes.

Enjoy!

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Wacky Wednesday Comedy Special: Pee Wee Herman on the Conan O'Brien Show

Pee-wee Herman is a comic fictional character created and portrayed by Jewish American comedian Paul Reubens. Born Paul Rubenfeld in Peekskill, New York, his father was one of the founding pilots of the Israeli Air Force during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

He is best known for his films and television series during the 1980s. The childlike Pee-wee Herman character developed as a stage act that quickly led to an HBO special in 1981. As the stage performance gained further popularity, Reubens took the character to motion picture with Pee-wee's Big Adventure in 1985, toning down the adult innuendo for the appeal of children. 

This paved the way for Pee-wee's Playhouse, an Emmy Award-winning children's series that ran on CBS from 1986 to 1991. Another film, Big Top Pee-wee, was released in 1988, and after a lengthy hiatus, a third film, Pee-wee's Big Holiday, was released by Netflix in 2016.

Due to negative media attention following a scandal in 1991, Reubens decided to shelve his alter ego during the 1990s, then gradually resurrected it during the following decade. It was at that time that Reubens addressed plans to write a new Pee-wee film, Pee-wee's Playhouse: The Movie. In June 2007, Reubens appeared as Pee-wee Herman for the first time since 1992 at Spike TV's Guys' Choice Awards.

In this video clip from an interview with Conan O"Brien, Pee Wee makes a grand entrance and shows off his Phony Phone Phone Ringer Excuse and his balloon trick.

Enjoy!

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Comedian Modi's Yoeli Character, After Losing His Presidential Bid, is Secretary of Simcha

Remember Yoely, the Hasidic character played by comedian Modi who announced his Haimish Party candidacy for U. S. President last June? Well, Yoely has come to grips with his election defeat and is now happily installed as Secretary of Simcha. 

In his new role, Yoely comments on the insurrection in Washington. Because he never heard the word before, he asks his assistant Duvi to Google it and finds that if an insurrection lasts more than four hours you should call your doctor.

As always, Yoely's bottom line is "Zai gezunt and zai b'simcha."

Enjoy!

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The Laugh Planet Ranks the Top 10 Jewish Comedians of All Time

The website The Laugh Planet specializes in publishing top 10 lists on Standup, TV, Film and Talk shows. It claims to be a trusted authority on ranking Comedy culture. If you like Standup Comedy a lot, then TheLaughPlanet is the right place for you. 

Last month they published a ranking of the top 10 Jewish comedians of all time.

Do you agree with their choices? We have a hard time keeping the list down to only 10 comedians, but we think they've picked some very good ones. Our personal list includes some 60 comedians, and our lectures at Florida Atlantic University profiled 30 of them.

Enjoy!

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The New Jewish Comedians: Meet Harrison Greenbaum, Comedian/Magician

Harrison Greenbaum, a 32-year-old member of The Jewish Week's annual "36 Under 36" young Jewish achievers, says "I'm a comedian who does magic, not simply a funny magician."

With a background that includes Hebrew school and, after his bar mitzvah, Hebrew High School, he has already appeared on America's Got Talent and Last Comic Standing.

Greenbaum began performing stand-up comedy while studying psychology and English at Harvard.  A summa cum laude graduate, he was the co-founder of the Harvard College Stand-Up Comic Society (or "Harvard College SUCS," as the group's name is cheekily acronymized), the first organization at Harvard dedicated to the performance and appreciation of stand-up comedy and one still popular on campus today.

Greenbaum peppers his act with frequent Jewish references. His material is basically clean, even cleaner "if I'm in a temple."

Today we're sharing a 10 minute excerpt from a Greenbaum stand-up set last year in Atlantic City. In 10 minutes he managed to draw applause and boos from the audience. But that's what happens in New Jersey when your stand-up act includes references to Trump, Obama, guns, substitute teachers, the NAACP, Amazon Echo, Alexa, and rectal thermometers.

Enjoy!

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"If There Weren't Any Jews" - An Original Tribute to Jewish Achievement by David Zasloff

David Zasloff is a stand-up comedian, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist. He has performed in a wide variety of venues throughout the United States including comedy festivals and conventions, prisons, nightclubs, universities, theaters, retirement homes, corporate events, private parties, temples, weddings, funerals, birthday parties, affairs of state, spiritual living centers, a few churches and one bris.

David has perfected the art of playing the shofar as a musical instrument. We have featured him three times before on Jewish Humor Central, playing Hatikva on the shofar, in a standup comedy routine where he plays Christmas songs written by Jews on the shofar, and as part of a Cuban Jewish ensemble in a Cuban Jewish Jazz Shabbat. 

After reading lists of Nobel Peace Prize winners and Pulitzer Prize winners David noticed that  almost all the winners were Jews. This made him proud to be Jewish. So he wrote a song about it called If There Weren't Any Jews.
 
Enjoy!

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Meet Standup Comedian Danny Lobell and His Ice Cream Encounters at Camp Danny

Comedian, Podcaster, and Storyteller Danny Lobell has nothing to do all day because he works as a standup comic at night. So he came up with something called "Camp Danny" in which he schedules activities for himself. His passion for frozen yogurt and ice cream accounts for most of the activities.

Danny is a half-Scottish, observant Jewish comedian living in Los Angeles. He runs the highly popular podcast Modern Day Philosophers, which features interviews with comedians like Carl Reiner, Shelley Berman, Mayim Bialik, and Marc Maron, and he's appeared on "This American Life." 

In his one-man show called, Broke As A Joke, he discusses all the crazy things he has done for money, from running a hairless cat breeding business to selling Jackie Mason's cassette tapes on Broadway and starting a hipster egg company. He also brings up his yeshiva education and how he had a sheltered life as an Orthodox kid on Long Island. 

If you're in Los Angeles, you can catch his show tonight at the Sacred Fools Theater and if you're in Edinburgh in August you can see him at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Enjoy!

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Meet Gary Gulman, Late Night Stand-up Comic

Gary Gulman is a stand-up comedian who lives in New York City. Originally from Boston, Gary has been a scholarship college football player, an accountant, a barista, a doorman, a waiter and a high school teacher. 

Now he is one of the most popular touring comics and one of only a handful of comedians to perform on every single late night comedy program.

In an interview by the JDate editorial team published online, Gulman reflected on how he includes Jewish themes in his comedy.I’ve started doing a lot more material about being Jewish and about the history of Jews.

On my website, they have my “Tonight Show” spot, which was from right around Chanukah. It was perfect because I got to talk about Chanukah versus Christmas as well as the many contributions of the Jews to modern society — like Dr. Jonas Salk and the inventor of the pill, Dr. Gregory Pincus. More recently, I’ve expanded to further inventions, like color television, the remote control and having Saturdays off.

Judaism plays an enormous role in my life. It’s a great contributor to my identity. It’s common ground I share with many of my friends and a lot of the people I work with, partially by osmosis — being around people with certain values which my family shares, Jewish values and Jewish culture — as well as going to Hebrew school and reading and learning more about Judaism… going to Israel.

A great deal of my personality, outlook and values are traditionally Jewish. I find myself not doing things because, somewhere along the line, my mother told me that Jews don’t do those things. For instance, camping — my mother said that Jews don’t camp and we don’t hunt, so I’ve never done either of those things. It affects just about every area of my life, not just affects, but informs or contributes to.

Gulman is a regular at The Comedy Cellar in New York. In this recent appearance on The Stephen Colbert Show, he reflects on the challenges of everyday life.

Enjoy!

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